Iñupiat

Inupiat family, portrayed by Edward Curtis , 1927

Iñupiat are indigenous people who live in the extreme northwest of the North American continent in the North Arctic and North Slope Boroughs and in the Bering Strait region in Alaska . Inupiaq , their original language, is an Inuit dialect from the Eskimo family .

The approximately 4000 Inupiat are divided into two larger groups according to the main dialect groups:

Seward Iñupiat (Northwest Alaska)
Northern Alaska Iñupiat (Northern Alaska and the extreme northwest of Canada)

The Northern Alaska Inupiat, who live on the Arctic Ocean and made their living from hunting marine mammals , especially the bowhead whale , are also known as Taremiut . They live in six villages and in Utqiaġvik . The northern Alaska Inupiat who live inland in the village of Anaktuvuk Pass mainly hunt caribou and are called Nunamiut .

As semi-nomadic fishermen and hunters, the Inupiat traditionally lived in small, non- hierarchically organized groups comprising six to twelve families. The groups named themselves after the region in which they lived and differed in their dialect.

religion

They originally believed in an animated animal world (→ religions of the Eskimo peoples ) , in which the mistreatment of an animal had negative consequences for the hunter. Christian proselytizing began on the coasts of Alaska in 1890 and as early as 1910 Christianity replaced the old ethnic religion among the Inupiat and beyond that among the Eskimos up to the Mackenzie Delta , although there was very little agreement between the two belief systems and despite the resistance of some shamans . At first, however, it was a Christian syncretistic form of religion that still contained many traditional elements. Later one speaks more of an indigenization , in which the foreign religion became more and more something “one's own”. Today only customs that have changed folkloric , traditional myths and a few rituals bear witness to the old beliefs.

Kulturwandel and Kunuuksaayuka as a PC game

Although the traditional and subsistence-oriented way of life of the Iñupiat still plays an important role today and is subsidized by the state, a cultural change is taking place even in the most remote regions of Alaska through contact with the modern world. As the centuries-old oral tradition of mythology and their own language threatened with extinction, the first indigenous computer game company "Upper One Games" has a Jump 'n' Run video game called Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa) developed. The game is based on the traditional story Kunuuksaayuka , in which an Inupiat girl searches for the causes of an apocalyptic blizzard that threatens the survival of her people. The children get to know many aspects of their culture through play. The game has already won several awards.

literature

Tobias Haller, Annja Blöchlinger, Markus John, Esther Marthaler, Sabine Ziegler (Eds.): Fossil Fuels, Oil Companies, and Indigenous Peoples. Strategies of Multinational Oil Companies, States, and Ethnic Minorities: Impact on Environment, Livelihoods, and Cultural Change. LIT Verlag, Münster 2007, p. 194ff. ISBN 3-8258-9798-2
Rosita Worl: Inupiat Arctic Whalers. In: Richard B. Lee, Richard Heywood Daly: The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers. Cambridge University Press, 1999, chapter 1.1.8. ISBN 0-521-57109-X

Individual evidence

↑ Inupiay . Fairbanks University Alaska Native Language Center, accessed January 16, 2017.
↑ Tobias Haller, Annja Blöchlinger: Fossil Fuels, Oil Companies, and Indigenous Peoples. Strategies of Multinational Oil Companies, States, and Ethnic Minorities: Impact on Environment, Livelihoods, and Cultural Change , LIT Verlag, Münster 2007, ISBN 3-8258-9798-2 , p. 194.
↑ Peoples and Cultures of the Circumpolar World I - Module 3: People of the Coast . University of the Arctic, Retrieved July 21, 2015.
^ Ernest S. Burch jr .: The Inupiat and the Chrisianization of Arctic Alaska. Etudes / Inuit / Studies, Laval, Lemieux Pavilion, Universite, Quebec (Canada). Pp. 81-108.
↑ Monika Seiller: "Never Alone - Kisima Ingitchuna" . In: Coyote, Indianische Gegenwart , No. 27th year - 105, Action Group Indians & Human Rights eV, Munich, spring 2015, ISSN 0939-4362 , pp. 29–30.

Web links

Commons : Inupiat - collection of images, videos and audio files

[1] Inupiay . Fairbanks University Alaska Native Language Center, accessed January 16, 2017.

[2] Tobias Haller, Annja Blöchlinger: Fossil Fuels, Oil Companies, and Indigenous Peoples. Strategies of Multinational Oil Companies, States, and Ethnic Minorities: Impact on Environment, Livelihoods, and Cultural Change , LIT Verlag, Münster 2007, ISBN 3-8258-9798-2 , p. 194.

[3] Peoples and Cultures of the Circumpolar World I - Module 3: People of the Coast . University of the Arctic, Retrieved July 21, 2015.

[4] Ernest S. Burch jr .: The Inupiat and the Chrisianization of Arctic Alaska. Etudes / Inuit / Studies, Laval, Lemieux Pavilion, Universite, Quebec (Canada). Pp. 81-108.

[5] Monika Seiller: "Never Alone - Kisima Ingitchuna" . In: Coyote, Indianische Gegenwart , No. 27th year - 105, Action Group Indians & Human Rights eV, Munich, spring 2015, ISSN 0939-4362 , pp. 29–30.